U.S. Monitoring N.J. Man Held China

Published 2:04 pm, Monday, April 25, 2016

Chinese factory workers are preventing a New Jersey businessman from leaving their town until he pays for the toys they say they made for him. The State Department is monitoring the case.

State Department spokeswoman Susan Pittman said Tuesday that her department has contacted local Chinese authorities regarding the situation of Henry Zhu, a Chinese citizen and a permanent resident of the United States.

Pittman said Zhu was in touch with local police in the town she would only identify as "near Shanghai" and that he was involved in a business dispute with workers at a toy factory there. She said the United States was not guaranteed access to Zhu because he is a citizen of China.

The Washington Post last week identified Zhu as a resident of Edison, N.J., and said he had been held for three weeks in a hotel in Sheyang, Jiangsu Province, about 200 miles northwest of Shanghai.

Zhu told the Post that he returned to Sheyang, his hometown, after workers held his wife and two-year-old son for five days in November while they were visiting his parents.

A representative of the workers told the Post that they want $55,000 in payment for stuffed animals they made for Zhu's import firm.

Zhu said he placed orders in 1997, in part to help his hometown, but stopped after a few months because of the toys' poor quality. He wants to resolve the dispute through the courts.